How To Correct Lettering Mistakes

How long have you been lettering? Three weeks? Three years? It doesn’t matter when it comes to mistakes. We all make them. Of course when you are first learning how to master any form of lettering, there will perhaps be a few more than once you are well practised at it, but these flaws will still crop up. It was whilst recently trying to ‘fix’ a piece I had lovingly spent an hour lettering that I thought it may be helpful to share all my little ways of preventing and repairing common lettering mistakes or accidents.

Embrace the bounce!

Firstly, prevention is always better than cure, and the same goes for lettering. Besides taking the time to sketch everything first in pencil and ensuring your pen is in tip-top condition before putting it to the paper, you can also adopt the ‘bounce’ style to mask any issues with straight baselines you may regularly encounter. As I write naturally with my paper at a 45º angle, I have found that by creating bounced words, any angled baselines are unnoticeable and there is a lot of scope for creating white space to flourish in too!

To try your hand at the bounce technique - write your first letter in pencil where you would normally on a page. From here, the next letter will be slightly higher than the first, rather than sitting on the same line. Following on, the third letter will then go lower than the baseline to balance the word out. Continue alternating between raising and lowering your letters until you have completed your word.

Before going over this in pen, look at your connections between each letter. If you have any that are really stretched, erase the two letters and bring them both a little closer to the original base line.

Once you are happy with your composition, you can draw over everything with your chosen pen or brush. With the extra spaces around the letters, you can practise placing flourishes to fill the gaps and make all your spacing and alignment look perfectly purposeful.

A problem shared…

When you are lettering, sometimes you don’t notice your mistakes until it is too late to do anything about it, or so you would think. Here’s a number of quick and easy tips for fixing lettering mistakes.

Uneven edges

Sometimes a wobbly line, or a watercolour line that has wicked into the paper, can make your letters look sloppy. You can easily neaten these up by either outlining your edges with a thin fineliner pen, or by adding your shadows right up to the edge of your letter, to blend the rough edge and the grey together.

Ink splatters

Have you ever dropped your pen onto the paper or just dripped a little ink where you shouldn’t have? Maybe you’ve slightly misjudged your spacing and are left with a couple of large areas of white space to fill? You can easily disguise many flaws such as these with some ink splattering, done on purpose of course! Scribble some ink from your pen onto a plastic surface until you have plenty to work with and drag a small wet paintbrush through it. Now flick that paintbrush over the areas needed and repeat until your mistake is no longer obvious. You can do this with more than one colour, and the more water and ink you have on your paintbrush, the bigger your splatters will be!

Fraying brush pen

If your pen begins to fray partway through a project and you don’t have the same colour to replace it with, you can do one of two things to smooth out those edges. If you are using a dual-ended pen, use the bullet nib to go over your lettering edges and sharpen them. If not, again scribble some of the pen ink onto a resistant surface and pick that ink up with a very fine paintbrush to perfect your edges with the correct colour.

Empty spaces

Occasionally, despite our careful planning, we can still end up with our lettering going slightly too far to one side or having a larger-than-desired gap between the lines. However, this is where we can really have some fun with doodles, decorative accents and flourishes! Pencil these in first, of course, and you can correct any spacing problems, making it all look completely intentional!

Smudging

For small smudges, if you are working on a white paper you can use a white gel or paint pen to cover over these marks. If you are working on a smooth paper, don’t attempt to add water to the smudge and remove it, as this usually will result in a bigger mess than you started with. However, if you are working on watercolour paper, use a very small brush with clean water on to work into the smudge gently and then, with a piece of absorbent kitchen towel, press over the damp area to lift off the moisture, along with the ink! You may find you need to do this a few times to completely lift all the colour, and be careful to avoid your letters.

I hope these tips and tricks for masking any mistakes helps to give you more confidence to experiment with your lettering, and I would love to hear what tricks you have also discovered yourself!

Inspiration hotspots

I am always searching for inspiration for new lettering techniques and styles, so here are this month’s three new inspirational artists to look out for on Instagram…

creativefiggy

Persia not only creates beautiful lettering, but she also designs stunning journal spreads! I love that she shows the pens she’s used too.

gracecallidesigns

If you love the look of mixed font lettering, you will want to check out Grace’s Instagram. Whether it is brush lettering, mono-line text or creative doodles and flourishes, you are bound to be inspired.

mmcbridecalligraphy

If calligraphy is more your thing, then be sure to add Michaela McBride to your follow list. She creates stunning wedding stationery that would be a dream for any bride.

Happy lettering,

Lou